Gods and Monsters

Director: Bill Condon

1998 / 105min / 35mm

In 1957, Frankenstein director James Whale, a prominent figure in Hollywood’s expatriate “English Colony” as well as of Tinseltown’s gay demimonde, was found dead by suicide in the pool of his Pacific Palisades home. Condon’s lauded period drama, like the 1995 Christopher Bram novel Father of Frankenstein that it adapts, imagines the final days of Whale (McKellen, in an Academy Award–nominated role), sifting through his unhappy memories, battling worsening health, sparring with his longtime housemaid, Hanna (Lynn Redgrave), and pining hopelessly after the dashing gardener, Clayton (Brendan Fraser), who gives him a last taste of the transports of love, unrequited though it may be. “[McKellen’s] reported to have glimpsed a bit of himself in the proud, reticent Whale, and from the evidence on the screen, imaginative transference between actor and part was complete. McKellen is hypnotic in this part, lending an absolute authority and dignity to even the most absurd of Whale’s struttings and posturings.” —Jonathan Lethem

Distributor: HereMedia

Screening license courtesy of HereTV

Please Note: This special screening is general admission with no reserved seating.

Introduction by Sir Ian McKellen on Sunday, April 5th

Part of In the Presence of Sir Ian McKellen